Sunday, September 05, 2010

The Devil She Came Back From Georgia

To say "Happy Labor Day"!

I have been laughing my eyeballs out over the journalistic efforts to explain the the Democratic troubles. This has accounted for my silence, because it is difficult to be polite about their theories. Is it really a communication problem?

So, with a drawl, let's 'splain it to them. With a soundtrack, because they just don't seem to be able to handle verbal logic any more.

In 2008, the Democrats ran on an anti-devil (aka George Bush), Cheap Tricks/Personal Jesus (Obama) kind of deal. The voters kind of went for it. College professors fell hardest. They made ObamaGirl look like a frigid anti-social man-hater. So this was the thumping political vibe we had goin' on for the common folk while the professorial class was humpin' the walls over their Personal Jesus.

And all was well, except for one thing. The Democrats woke up the morning after to discover that they had won the national elections lock, stock and barrel, and most of the locals, so now they had to govern. Naturally, the college professors flocked to DC to show the hillbillies how it was supposed to be done in the reality-based party.

There was only one problem - they had forgotten the reality. Not that there weren't warning signs of that during the campaign. Weird Science! was clearly evident, as in Obama's suggestion that properly inflating tires would go a long way toward solving the fossil fuel problem. Weird Science! flourished in the early days of the administration, as was demonstrated when Steven Chu (Nobel science laureate!) suggested at a global warming conference that painting all the rooftops white would go a long way toward solving global warming. Even those most addicted to Weird Science! had to realize that this would address urban heat island effects more than anything else, which was puzzling. On the one hand, global warming was in. On the other hand, Chu seemed to be suggesting that dealing with the UHI effect would take care of a lot of it. Science was getting weirder.

Eventually, the popular credibility crisis in Weird Science! came to a head during the BP oil spill, when Eugene Robinson wrote his "please no more Nobel laureates, how 'bout some engineers?" column, and the population began to see Weird Science! as definitely weird, but not very effective in the real world.

Fortunately, the average American realized that Weird Science! looked an awful lot more convincing when you were stoned, so the medical marijuana movement (and up yours, Supreme Court) gained a lot of impetus.

And then came health care reform, and the only way you can get those numbers to add up is to be very, very stoned. Also it really helps to be wasted when you are trying to figure out how you are going to pay both your required medical premiums plus your required 30% match to actually get health care.

So the states started passing medical marijuana laws to get with the program. After all, medical marijuana should cut a lot of pharmaceutical costs, right? And since the basic idea is to make sure that most people get less medical care, they'll need to be stoned to get through it.

And that would have carried us through the Weird Science!-No-Health-Care-Reform crisis except for the fact that somehow, the DC solution to all these sorts of Weird Science! problems always seemed to add up to taxes and centralized solutions. Carbon taxes, gas taxes, fines if you don't have the money to buy insurance, much higher utility bills because the utilities were mandated to increase renewables.... But always more money, and always more government control. Plus, we don't seem to have the money any more, which presents a problem when all our reforms demand that individuals pay for more. This focus on centralization and more taxes especially clashed with the medical marijuana people, who have always thought and acted locally and tried to keep the feds out of it:

Ergo, the Tea Party, which basically follows the "Don't tread on my hemp patch" motto, and definitely, but definitely, doesn't want to pay any federal taxes on its tea.

Nor had the centralization problem simply been a DC/Infernal Peasants concept. The Congressional Dem leaders, especially Pelosi, were ruling their members with such strictness that it reminded one of the Nazi party's parliamentary innovations. The various Congress Critters were told when to vote and how to vote, and there wasn't even an attempt to cover their butts with the voters by making the bills available to the Critters to read before they were forced to vote "Yes".

This was a continuation of the professorial approach, but unfortunately when the Critters returned to their districts the voters did not respond well to the new theme no matter how professionally it was marketed:

Indeed, the popular reaction was such that many Critters fled their districts and returned to DC only to be told by their own Masters that they needed to get back out there and win one for the Gipper. Repeated attempts to do so over more than a year have only led to a widespread rebellion among voters who are, quite frankly, more than a bit scandalized at the kinkiness involved:

These voters don't mind if the professorial classes are humping the walls, but the voters are not interested in attending that type of party.

Inevitably (and confoundingly to most journalists) this has led both to a quiet rebellion among some Congress Critters and a less optimistic electoral outlook for Democrats:

A substantial number of Democrats in Congress appear to be hoping that Pelosi goes down, but they are too cowardly to attempt it themselves.

So to summarize for Trained-But-Confused-Journalists:No, this has very little to do with Obama, although he is apparently Pelosi's bitch, and that is eroding his approval ratings and messing up Matthews' tingles. It has nothing to do with racial anxieties. It is not a sudden temper tantrum among the voters. Among the voters, it is pretty much business as usual. It is DC which suddenly decided to get into this Dominance/Submission game, and the average US citizen hasn't changed at all in his or her preference not to play such a game.

If a party suddenly dresses up in whips, chains and chaps and wanders around the streets being flagellated by a Dominatrix named Pelosi, the average voter is tolerant enough to let them all have all the fun they want. But the voteres draw the line at participating themselves.

PS: But don't worry, Obama fans. After the election Team Two, led by Chris Matthews himself, has an idea about how to restore Obama's mojo. They're gonna pull out the old Pizzaz (video you will never be able to scrape from your brain.)

Does Pelosi remind anyone else of "The Hammer" with Boobs? The independents I know who voted for Obama were hoping for a change from 8 years of viciously corrupt "Leadership" That had a complete disregard for the constitution and the rule of law. And got a slapstick version of the same thing. The consensus ampng the moderate republicans,old syle dems and independents I know is that our governmental system is irrevocably broken,and that the gridlock of the next 2 years is as good as it will get until it collapses.

To give Steve Chu his due, a fair amount of the global warming data is corrupted by heat island effect for which the correction is not nearly adequate. Removing the heat islands would make the data look much better.

Tom - Nancy is not bright. I think her intentions are good but that she can't figure out what's going on, and substitutes determination for knowledge.

In a way I do feel this administration has been a very bad comedy act. But it isn't just a reprise of GOP tactics. It has struck off on diversions of its own.

The reason Congress has such terrible approval ratings is that first a GOP-controlled Congress convinced the population that it neither knew nor cared about their concerns, and now a Democratic-controlled Congress has worked just as hard as it can to reiterate that.

We will have to cycle a lot of people out of Congress before we can get a Congress that realizes what it is supposed to be doing.

first a GOP-controlled Congress convinced the population that it neither knew nor cared about their concerns, and now a Democratic-controlled Congress has worked just as hard as it can to reiterate that.

The executive branch doesn't care either. And that's been true since Bush I. As long as we were drunk on low interest borrowing and cheap imported goods, nobody in government cared.

And then came health care reform, and the only way you can get those numbers to add up is to be very, very stoned. Also it really helps to be wasted when you are trying to figure out how you are going to pay both your required medical premiums plus your required 30% match to actually get health care.

My first reaction, as a former pothead, was to take umbrage. But then I realized that you may be inexperienced in these matters, so here is the scoop:

Being really stoned doesn't make impossible math any less impossible, even by being wrong. It just makes you not care - which does have a lot in common with the Democrat position, I'll admit.